If you know anything about me, you know that gaming is my passion. I love this medium. I love this artform. I love this industry. I feel fortunate to be alive during a time of such innovation in the melding of visual and interactive entertainment. But for the last few weeks, ever since the beginning and ending of E3 and its aftermath, I’ve been worried about the state of certain facets of our industry — namely, our gaming press.

I have been wanting to write a post addressing certain issues for quite some time, but I could never collect my thoughts well enough to put together a case to present. So during this year’s E3 I made a point of listening to responses from both the gaming community and the gaming press via forums, comments, blogs, and podcasts.

It is apparent to me that the press is not happy about where E3 stands as an event. I haven’t been able to discern whether or not if, overall, they are dissatisfied as games journalists or simply as gamers, but I am not sure that it matters. I don’t know that they have much reason to be upset either way.
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I’m a little late this week. I am coming off of several days of testing various Linux distros on my notebook in an attempt to find one that will cooperate with my Wi-Fi cardbus adapter. Now that that’s behind me, I can get on with writing this week’s cheap game post. I settled on Ubuntu, by the way.

I have another “Shmup” (Shoot’eM-Up) for you here today, similar to Geometry Wars from a couple of weeks ago. Unlike Geometry Wars, however, and more similar to Every Extend Extra Extreme from Q Entertainment, the object of this twin stick shooter is to create chains of explosions over top of some pretty interesting music. The game is Everyday Shooter, created by Jonathan Mak of Queasy Games, and this formerly PS3-exclusive shooter is now on the PC. As the winner of three IGF 2007 awards including Design Innovation, Excellence in Audio and the GameTap Indie Award, it’s very much worth a look.
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